


Confession Time

by Marzi



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Happy Ending, Telepathy, mild body sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-10 20:32:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18415325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marzi/pseuds/Marzi
Summary: The Doctor wanted to believe a lack of body meant that she would run into her again, that there was hope her questions would be answered, but that would mean hoping for something worse. If she was alive it was because selfishness and cruelty had won, and all those years spent together would be bitter memories rather than hopeful. Yet if she really was gone that meant she had done something beautiful and amazing and died for it, all because of the Doctor. Neither was an appealing option.





	Confession Time

 "I'm dead."

 

Her hands were on the side of the Doctor's face, shaking, tense, barely touching. There was an unnatural heat softly radiating from her skin, and even when she leaned forward to touch their foreheads together, the Doctor could see her face.

 

Her name stuck in her throat before she could say it.

 

There was pain, the stench of scorched earth, and the prickling hum of ions along her skin. Her lips were dry, intensely parched and nearly bleeding.

 

"I'm dead."

 

The Doctor's fingers twitched, ready to reach out, clutch, grab, hold-- to say  _no, you're right here. You're right here with me._ There was nothing but empty air beneath her palms. She panicked, flailed, and struck the edge of the TARDIS console with her fingertips.

 

She blinked, dazed, staring up at her control room. She had been doing TARDIS repairs, had to have dozed off, because she hadn't been standing and was definitely alone. Groaning, she hauled herself up, almost tumbling back down when she let go of the console before she was fully on her feet. Her shoes were gone and her soles ached as they touched the floor, unbelievably tender. She wiggled her toes and the feeling slowly vanished. Her back ached in their place. She had to have been laying strangely when she drifted off, cut off the blood flow and left everything numb. She was getting old if she was falling asleep during TARDIS repairs now.

 

"Sorry old girl, I'll finish up later."

 

The Doctor's hand froze as she reached for the monitor, the blur of her smudgy reflection stopping her. Tentatively, she brought her hand towards her face, fingers brushing against the angry red mark on her forehead. It ached like a bruise and didn't seep away like the pain in her feet.

 

Maybe she hadn't fallen asleep. Maybe she'd cracked her head and passed out. A proper healing coma was supposed to be dreamless, but this had hardly been a life threatening injury. She might have reflexively started the process but never brought herself fully under. That might explain why she saw....

 

The Doctor ran her hands over her face and sighed. "Stop it. Stop it..." But she never could stop thinking.

 

_I'm dead._

 

* * *

 

"Could we get hover boards?"

 

"What?" The Doctor brought up her sonic, fiddling with the settings.

 

Ryan had one hand on the wall, the other at the stitch on his side. "It's just all this running-- Graham is getting sick of it, he's old you know--"

 

"Hey now, I like a bit of cardio every now and again. Keeps me fit." Graham was leaning bodily against the wall, as if it were the only thing keeping him upright.

 

Yaz had put her hands on top of her head and was panting. "It keeps me ready for the physical exams. I figure if I can run after--" she waved her hand in the direction their quarry had gone, "--then I can catch anyone trying to do a runner."

 

"Hover boards aren't better than feet. And legs! Got to use your legs. Gotta get used to them. I used to have really long legs."

 

"Why'd you get rid of them if you like to run so much?" Ryan asked.

 

"Well maybe she's realized that she can't keep running from the fires of her own destruction. She can only leave her planet, her enemies, her friends, to burn for so long before she must be consumed too."

 

The Doctor finished fiddling with her sonic and looked up at the sudden heavy silence surrounding her. "What?"

 

* * *

 

She didn't keep blacking out so much as she kept going about her day quite normally only to find something else was happening in tandem. Yes, she was rewiring that spectra analysis array to catch the necessary light waves to rescue the fragile aliens sent adrift by their untimely collision with that prism, but she was also gutting the research station of all its data. Yes, she was enjoying a nice relaxing walk along the pier of Grenon IIX with the fam, but she was also explaining the time she had flash frozen the water planet of Zenit Ceri and admired it as her personal diorama. Except she hadn't done that.

 

It was a little difficult for her friends not to notice.

 

"We're just worried, Doc. You haven't seemed yourself lately, is all." Graham was the one who had been elected to speak with her, as he seemed to be handling her sudden shifts the best.

 

"I know. I'm sorry, I don't mean to..."  _Scare you, disturb you, make you want to leave._

 

"You don't have to apologize. We just want to know if we can help."

 

Tears began to fill her eyes. Shock flickered across his face a moment before he tucked it away.

 

"Hey, we're here alright? All of us are here." He hesitated then pulled her into a hug.

 

The Doctor sniffed. "I'm just calling a friend, it's alright."

 

Graham pulled back. "What?"

 

"Thanks for the hug though, I think I like them this time around. Hugs are nice."

 

* * *

 

Despite her warning of their arrival, Yaz, Ryan, and Graham all jumped a bit when Heather and Bill appeared.

 

"Oh wow." Bill smiled. "Look at this place! Look at... you."

 

The Doctor wiped the last of the tears away. "It's good to see you again."

 

"It's good to be me again. Well, mostly."

 

"There's nothing in the universe that could make you anything other than Bill Potts."

 

"Thanks." She rocked awkwardly on her heels before looking past the Doctor. "So, these are?"

 

"Oh, right! Bill, this is Yaz, Ryan, and Graham. Fam, this is Bill!"

 

"Nice to meet you." Yaz smiled.

 

"Pleasure." Graham nodded.

 

"Yeah same." Ryan was unabashedly staring at the trails of water they were leaving behind.

 

"Oh wow, fam? That's new. That's good. Well fam, this is Heather, my girlfriend."

 

"Hello."

 

Another chorus of hellos echoed around the TARDIS. The Doctor beamed at everyone.

 

"You know Doctor, as wonderful as it is to see you, why did you call us? How did you call us?"

 

"You left me your tears, remember?"

 

"Yeah. Glad they were good for something."

 

"I'm sorry I wasn't there when..."

 

"No, no... it's alright. I'm glad I was with you."

 

The sudden heaviness in the air had everyone capable of breathing holding their breath. A conversation with that many layers could smother a room, like a particularly heavy duvet. If it wasn't being hastily folded up and shoved back into the linen closet, to extend the metaphor.

 

"Thank you." The Doctor stepped forward and clutched her hands.

 

"Wow. You really are different. More than..." She indicated vaguely at her body.

 

"I told you--"

 

"Time lords are less solid on the whole man, woman thing. I remember. I'm a puddle now, I suppose I can't say much."

 

"Is that why you're--" Ryan waved his hand up and down.

 

"Wet?" Heather supplied.

 

Bill coughed. "Remember how we talked about double entendres and talking to species with binary sexes, babe?"

 

"Oh. Right, we are dripping because the bipedal form you see is not our natural state."

 

"Well that clears that up." Graham smiled.

 

"Your natural state is why I called you here, actually." The Doctor let her hands drop back to her side. "I need you to do something dangerous. Oh yes, send the disposable. She already killed this one once, might as well do it again. Once more with feeling, am I right?"

 

"Oh my god." Bill took an instinctive step back. "Was that-? Is she-? Doctor are you-"

 

The Doctor sighed. "Oh, I've done it again haven't I. What did I say this time?"

 

* * *

 

Heather was the one who went in the end. Bill really didn't want to go, and the Doctor couldn't blame her.

 

"I would have asked someone else, if I knew anyone--"

 

"It's alright. Gives me an excuse to catch up. Probably wouldn't have bothered otherwise." Bill fiddled with something on the TARDIS console and a biscuit fell out.

 

"No, that's not-- yes, she does have a marvelous track record of abandonment. You weren't the first and there will never be a last."

 

Bill took a deep breath. "Doctor, maybe we can have this conversation when you're more yourself."

 

"That would probably be best." She ate the biscuit when Bill walked away from the dispenser.

 

The fam were awkwardly huddled together. They didn't want to leave but they also didn't know what to do. The Doctor didn't know what to tell them. She didn't know what was happening herself. She dispensed another biscuit just as Heather reappeared. She was alone.

 

The Doctor didn't move around the console, so Heather came to her. Water from her hands trailed off the singed edges of the umbrella.

 

"There wasn't anything else."

 

Of course there wasn't. She was dead.

 

* * *

 

The Doctor wanted to be alone. The only trouble was that she  _was_  alone. Alone in a way she had never wanted to be again. Except she wasn't. Of all the maddening, ridiculous things to be subject too--

 

She almost threw the umbrella across the room. So she hadn't left the ship in the end. Something had made her stay, and the Doctor would never know what. She wanted to believe a lack of body meant that she would run into her again, that there was hope her questions would be answered, but that would mean hoping for something worse. If she was alive it was because selfishness and cruelty had won, and all those years spent together would be bitter memories rather than hopeful. Yet if she really was gone that meant she had done something beautiful and amazing and died for it, all because of the Doctor. Neither was an appealing option. Why hadn't they just stayed near each other? They could have both had what they wanted, instead....

 

Her grip tightened on the umbrella until she heard the device's casing began to creak.

 

Why couldn't the two of them just be honest with each other? There was a time when the lies and subterfuge hadn't been so commonplace. When one would talk and the other would listen without second guessing. When they were both barefoot on the red grass, not waiting for the other shoe to drop.

 

The Doctor twisted her hands and the screw came loose from its moorings. The umbrella was in pieces around her. Not shattered to a million angry shards, but dismantled. Carefully laid out. What was she doing? She took a deep breath.

 

"You and I are going to have a long talk when all this is over." She hoped that was a promise they would be able to keep.

 

* * *

 

"What is it?"

 

"A confession dial. Kind of how my people do a last will and testament."

 

"It was in the umbrella?" Bill asked. "She just carried that around with her?"

 

"I doubt it was always there. I think a part of her must have remembered what was going to happen, even if her past had been made to forget it."

 

"Is that sentence supposed to make sense?" Graham asked.

 

"Not linearally." The Doctor fiddled with the disk. "And... they're generally sent the eve before a death. Not after."

 

"You really think she's gone? After all this? How do you explain what's happening to you if she's dead?" Bill was still reluctant to get close to the disc.

 

"Um, if who's dead?" Yaz asked.

 

"My friend."

 

"Doctor..."

 

"It's true Bill, I can't not say it. She was--"

 

"No Doctor, what are you--"

 

There was a light.

 

* * *

 

It was the door to the vault. It was the door to the vault and it was closed. All of its sensors and locks indicated they were within working order. The Doctor stepped cautiously up to the door and slowly rested her hand, then the side of her head, against the metal. Piano music hung in the air, and the subtle accompanying twang of an electric guitar. It was an odd sort of duet but it was beautiful. The Doctor didn't want to open the vault, didn't want to interrupt. Yet she hadn't been brought here to listen in at the door.

 

She took a deep breath and slowly pulled back, hands moving in the familiar patterns to unlock it. What if it was just a recording. What if it was just in her head. What if it was empty.

 

Yet when the doors finished opening, the whole of the vault was there. Missy included. She was seated at the piano bench, but there was no sign of the guitarist she had heard. Good. She didn't want to talk to herself right now, even just a matrix generated version.

 

Each step felt unimaginably heavy as she moved forward. This was it then, the last will and testament of her friend. She really was dead. It had all been... what, psychic echoes? Her last, mocking jabs and goodbyes reaching her too late? The confluence of personal timelines, the proximity of the black hole, it had jumbled things up. She got the message too late.

 

She stopped short of the containment field. "I'm here."

 

"I know." She kept playing the piano. "That's where you've been all these centuries."

 

A thousand years. That was what she wanted to tell her before she died then. She would have stayed the full length of her sentence. But the Doctor had already known that, hadn't she? Then why did she feel so relieved? After what she had learned about the colony ship, why was this so important? She laughed, she couldn't help it. The Doctor had been with her in the vault before she entered, though that was impossible. "You're better than me, you know that?"

 

 

The music stopped.

 

"Less than a hundred years in and I already wanted to run off. I would have... I would have wanted to take you with me, but I would have always wondered if you could have done it. I wouldn't have given you the chance. But you did it. You did it all on your own."

 

Missy turned on the piano bench to watch her properly. The Doctor kept smiling, stepping up into the containment field, the energy shell around it wasn't active.

 

"You are so brilliant, you know that? And better than anyone would give you credit for."

 

"No need to be insulting. I'm more patient perhaps. Could be I'm just playing the long game."

 

The Doctor shook her head. "You stayed. Not just here, but on the ship. I wish... I wish I found you before, but I suppose if now is all I get, then... I'm glad. Thank you, my friend. You can rest knowing you've been heard."

 

Missy smiled, looking somewhat bemused. The Doctor held her gaze, trying to keep more tears from falling. As Missy continued to stare at her the Doctor frowned.

 

"You're still here."

 

"Yes."

 

"But... I heard your confession. Your task should be complete. You should return to the matrix, if there was a matrix to return to." The Doctor fumbled in her pockets for the sonic screwdriver, would it even work in here?

 

"Oh really? Your lovely speech was my confession?"

 

"Oh. Right. Well, you know what they say, funerals are for the living, I suppose I just..."

 

"Funeral? Doctor, are you under the mistaken impression that I'm dead?"

 

The Doctor blinked. Her hand had just found the screwdriver, but it quickly fell from her grasp as her fingers loosened. "You... but..." She got right up to Missy, leaning into her personal space until they were nose to nose. Maybe this projection wasn't aware of her true self's death. Maybe it wasn't a projection. Maybe... "I can't believe you!" She slammed her hands down, hitting the piano keys and causing a discordant howl of notes to hit the air. She spun on her heel and started to walk out of the containment field.

 

"One minute it's all positive sentiment, the next you're mad at me for being alive?"

 

"I was grieving! How are you even alive?" The Doctor stopped walking and wiped back around to face her.

 

"Oh come on Doctor, you know how confession dials work." She slowly stood from the bench, closing the gap between them. "You sent me yours after all. I just had to make sure I got in it."

 

The umbrella had been left behind, the parts she had needed to finish building it had been inside. Why had she left it behind? Why not leave it to her past-self to finish? Why had she needed that route of escape to begin with.... "And how did you manage that?"

 

Missy reached up and prodded her right in the center of the forehead.

 

"You can't just piggyback on my brain!"

 

"Why? You're barely using it."

 

The Doctor choked on her retort to that insult and said something else instead. "All those things I've been doing! And saying! Why would you say those things?"

 

"I was going into a confession dial, confessing things seemed important."

 

"None of those things were about you!"

 

The amusement faded from her eyes to be replaced by something that looked like pain. "May I confess something else then, Doctor?"

 

Wary, she only managed to nod in response.

 

"All that time riding around in your head, I never realized you'd regenerated into a woman. You look lovely, by the way."

 

The Doctor's mouth hung open a moment as her brain tried to process what seemed like an innocuous statement. She was unaware of what was said when she had her little slips, but she had asked her friends to repeat things back to her verbatim, and had tweaked the sonic to be a temporary recording device. She had wanted to know, needed to hear it.

 

_"Well maybe she's realized that she can't keep running from the fires of her own destruction. She can only leave her planet, her enemies, her friends, to burn for so long before she must be consumed too."_ _  
_

_"Oh yes, send the disposable. She's already killed this one once, might as well do it again. Once more with feeling, am I right?"_ _  
_

_"Yes, she does have a marvelous track record of abandonment. You weren't the first and there will never be a last."_ _  
_

"Missy..."

 

"I see you still think quite highly of yourself. Self-depreciation isn't a good look on you Doctor."

 

"You really shouldn't talk in third person. It's confusing."

 

She let out a quick, sharp laugh. "I don't think so."

 

"Right. You're... you're really here."

 

"Yes, and I would like to leave."

 

"Missy you downloaded yourself into my brain and had me build your own coffin so you could use it as a life preserve."

 

"And?"

 

"I think we should talk about that."

 

* * *

 

 

The TARDIS control room was starting to get really crowded, warming up from all the extra bodies just standing around. Or maybe that was because Missy was on top of her. Missy was alive. Missy was alive and here, and... touching. Her skin was time lord cool and didn't vanish underneath her palms. There was a shudder across the Doctor's body as she caressed the side of her face but that probably had nothing to do with an overly charged atmosphere. At least not one charged by storm clouds. She didn't vanish, but that just made the Doctor hold on to her tighter.

 

"You don't get to say you're dead." The little tremor of fear in her voice was hopefully hidden in her whisper.

 

"Of course not. You know I'm indestructible."

 

It was such a blatant lie she couldn't help but smile.

 

"Um, Doctor?"

 

The Doctor looked over at the sound of Yaz's voice. "Fam! This is Missy, Missy, this is--"

 

"Not interested." She stood up, straightened her skirt and brushed her fingers along the edge of her hair. Her eyes moved around the control room before landing on the other familiar face. "Oh! Potts. Potts the Puddle, you changed out of your tin suit. Shame, you looked quite fetching in it."

 

"Missy!" The Doctor scrambled to her feet.

 

She gave a barely apologetic shrug of one shoulder.

 

Bill just glowered. "Told you she was alive."

 

"This is your... friend?" Yaz's pronunciation of the word 'friend' was fairly off.

 

"Is that all you told them I was? Bit insulting, that. Now I definitely don't want to meet them."

 

The Doctor didn't have a chance to point out that she was already interacting with them when Ryan spoke.

 

"Why does everyone have a girlfriend but me?"

 

Missy preened in the awkward silence that followed.

 

Bill eventually coughed to break the tension, though the Doctor knew she didn't have lungs anymore. "Yeah mate, even when you were Scottish I wondered about that."

 

"She was really Scottish?" Graham asked.

 

"Oh yeah." Bill nodded. "Tall, skinny, old bloke. Hair that--" She waved one hand above her head. "Bit mad sometimes. A lot of the time."

 

"Oi." The Doctor frowned. "Right here."

 

* * *

 

 

 "You aren't going to stay, are you?"

 

Missy fiddled with something on the console and a biscuit was dispensed. She stared at it in surprise for a moment before picking it up and nibbling at its corner. "For the moment, maybe."

 

The Doctor couldn't keep the large grin from her face. "This is good, yeah? This is... good."

 

"One of us will be a coward eventually and run, but for now Doctor I'd say yes, this is... _good_."

 

Honesty was bitter sometimes, but she struggled to keep her spirits up and dispensed a biscuit for herself. "I'm liking this confession thing less and less."

 

"Would you rather I lie?" Missy waved her half-eaten confection at her, throwing crumbs this way and that.

 

"I'm not sure. Will you tell me what happened?"

 

"No."

 

"Honesty. Another thing you're better at than me lately."

 

"I've always been better at honesty than you."

 

She sniffed. "Maybe."

 

Missy smiled and leaned forward on the console. "Doctor?"

 

"Yes?"

 

"Let's go somewhere fun. I feel like letting my hair down."

 

She wasn't dreaming so much as she kept going about her day quite normally only to realize something amazing was happening in tandem. Yes, she was rescuing the last of the Resfel monarchy and being titled as an honorary member of the royal family, but she was also running barefoot through the grass with Missy in order to escape the leaders of the failed coup. Yes, she was climbing to the top of the Ylp peaks in order to watch the Esre meteor shower which only happened once every thousand years, but she was also holding her best friend's hand. Except Missy was more than just her friend.

 

It was kind of hard for the universe not to notice.

 

**Author's Note:**

> /shrug  
> There are a million and one ways to bring Missy back, and I feel like I should just contribute to the idea pool as much as possible.


End file.
